


a plasticity to the soul

by seinmit



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Brief thoughts of suicide, Captivity, Face-Fucking, Gunplay, Loved One Forced to Watch, M/M, Past Brainwashing, Past Sexual Abuse, Past Torture, Rape, Recorded Sex, Self-Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:15:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24993730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seinmit/pseuds/seinmit
Summary: Bucky awoke in a new place that he’d been in before.Alexander Pierce opened the door, back from the dead.
Relationships: Alexander Pierce/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Alexander Pierce, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 10
Kudos: 64
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	a plasticity to the soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yakkorat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yakkorat/gifts).



> Title from ["bag lady, boxed" by Emily Carney](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58221/bag-lady-boxed).
> 
> _there is a plasticity to the soul that can fit inside  
>  sweaters but not inside drawers. how many times  
> can one watch the same porn video before one  
> feels that they have become that porn video. how  
> many times can you attempt to untangle a cross._

Bucky awoke in a new place that he’d been in before. He could not articulate his knowing of this place, but it was deep in his autonomic nervous system. Before he’d even shaken off the sedative, he could taste the concrete walls and smell the iron bars. 

When he opened his eyes, his actual surroundings surprised him. The sluggishness of the drug and the stink of metal—he had assumed he was in a dream or back in the source of his memories, the two barely distinguishable. Instead of the cell he knew, though, this was a closet, and office supplies surrounded him. There were boxes of paper clips and unopened packs of whiteboard markers in a teetering stack. An old CRT rested on a cart, a few feet away, dark enough that he could see the shape of his reflection in it. He flinched away, breathing in deep. 

His sinuses pulsed with a remembered wound—someone had broken his nose, recently. It already knit itself back together, but his body retained the twinges of pain past the healing. The metal he smelled was the drip of blood down the back of his throat, but his brain interpreted the blood as a memory. If he kept breathing past it, the air in fact smelled of bleach and dust. Whatever cleaning they did here didn’t reach the corners. 

Alexander Pierce opened the door, back from the dead. 

He smiled at Bucky, impossibly smug. They both knew he was thinking about asking Bucky if Pierce had been missed, but dismissed it as banal. Bucky knew how he thought.

“Are you a clone or something?” Bucky bit out. His voice was thick with a vestigial aggression, hackles raising. The way his shoulders tensed up forced awareness of an additional fact about his position—they cuffed him behind his back. He hadn’t noticed it before; the tug of metal against his flesh wrist faded into the same background, just an expected physical sensation like the rub of his t-shirt collar against the skin of his neck. 

He had known they had him before he opened his eyes. He had known he was back. 

Pierce didn’t respond to him. He grabbed the flimsy folding chair that had been leaning against the wall and shook it open. He sat in front of Bucky, a couple feet away. It was enough that Bucky wouldn’t be able to reach him, but only just. If he lunged forward, he could probably barely rest his forehead against Pierce’s kneecap. 

Bucky was chained to the floor next to reams of paper and on cheap industrial carpet. He wondered what type of business kept a reinforced and magnetized steel beam next to the spares, perfectly designed to keep a super-soldier from standing up. 

“The new arm is a pretty piece of work,” Pierce said. “I’m impressed.” 

A flush of pride, bizarre and unwanted, followed by shame, but they both seemed insignificant. It was hard for him to track his own mind. All of his present emotions were swirling little eddies in a deep well of recognition, a black pool with his old home at the bottom.

“We had to do a thorough analysis when you were out, knick some design elements. That girl knows her stuff.” 

And that was really a Pierce thing, wasn’t it. For an evil motherfucker, he was a stickler for credit where credit was due. He read management books. Bucky remembered their covers all askew, seen only in flashes from where he was between Pierce’s thighs, his cock a heavy weight inside Bucky’s body and Bucky’s mind a traitorous calm. 

Shuri _had_ made a good arm, but Bucky recognized it as the cue it was—he flexed, putting a strange simulacrum of muscle into it. Effort felt distinct when filtered through a complicated neural matrix that was so sophisticated that it had its own AI. 

The magcuffs didn’t budge. He was stuck, and the wild-animal knowledge of it made him try harder. He strained, grunting, and pulled his entire body as far as he could away from the place where the cuffs bound him. 

The magnets held. Bucky was a pinned butterfly—a hobby that Pierce should look into. He’d probably like it. 

Pierce kept smiling, watching him. He didn’t hide the pleasure in the uselessness of Bucky’s thrashing, and Bucky couldn’t stop, even though he knew it was precisely what Pierce wanted. That was the twisted fucking thing, the back and forth. Pierce made Bucky dance to his tune, and he did so with Bucky helpless to resist, even as he knew every step and could sing the song right along with Pierce. The knowing didn’t help stop the doing; Bucky had thought a lot about that, in the years of his freedom. He had wondered what had caused what—did his mind succumb because his understanding of his own subjugation was meaningless, or did the brainwashing cause meaningless of his thoughts? He hadn’t ever wanted to find out, but he supposed this could be a test. 

He kept uselessly pulling. Effort strong enough that pain radiated from his shoulders, a metallic grumble from the arm, a whine of motors—that was enough to move the cuffs a millimeter, metal barely sliding against metal. He wanted to keep fighting, but he knew it was hopeless. He couldn’t ever fight the inevitable, and that’s what Steve had never understood. Bucky’s shame mystified Steve—he’d say that nobody could have survived the torture that HYDRA put him through. Anyone would have broken. 

But giving up always felt like a choice, and he could always pinpoint the precise moment where it happened. 

Now, his body stilled its uncoordinated thrashing in shuddering jerks, a machine powering down and ticking to a stop. 

Pierce smile twitched. 

“Get it out of your system?” he said. 

“I don’t have the triggers anymore,” Bucky said, his voice unrecognizable in his throat. “Based on last time, you’ll be dead before you break me again.” 

Pierce’s amusement didn’t waver.

“I’ve died before. You’ve broken before. Things never really change that much, do they? It’s all variance around a mean.” 

Bucky’s past pulled at his mind. He remembered breaking. It had taken nearly twenty years before he’d killed for HYDRA—he remembered _stopping_ , too, but he'd broken first.

Steve had said his name, and Bucky clawed their way to the shore. He remembered the taste of the Potomac and his jaw clenched, defiant. Pierce had failed. He had failed, and died, inglorious and unexpected. They’d failed, and they would fail again. Faster, this time. There would be people looking for him. It would take his vivisected corpse before Steve believed him dead, this time. This time would be different. 

“The thing about failure,” Pierce said. “It teaches you. That’s what it does. Real leadership is about managing failure. Failing faster, and better, and more thoroughly. We have a lot of information from how we failed to keep you.” 

The surprise of Pierce responding to Bucky’s unspoken thoughts faded near instantaneously. Pierce had a way of continuing a conversation by himself. He had wasted so many words on the Asset and the Soldier and his absent-minded monologue had always wormed its way into that Soldier’s inner-life. And when the reverse happened, when Bucky strung a few thoughts together, Pierce had always narrated Bucky’s inner-life.

“I’ve learned something from you,” Pierce said, gravely. “I’ll be grateful for that for a long time. I used to think we could reduce the human to the animal, but it turns out that certain types of human attachment are very basic. Given the opportunity, it makes more sense to take advantage of them than to spend the energy erasing them.” 

Bucky kept his breathing even, dropping his eyes. Pierce seemed unconcerned with the lingering silence. After a moment, he stood, going to the television. He turned it on with a noise like a tiny electronic balloon popping in Bucky’s ears. A moment of static, another button click, and then silence again. 

“You’re going to want to see this.” Pierce wasn’t trying to hide his amusement. 

He shifted his chair to sit next to Bucky, close enough that all Bucky’s muscles tensed. His brain hummed with calculation—Bucky’s position on the floor meant he might throw himself forward, knock Pierce’s chair out from under him. If he got Pierce close enough, he’d tear out his throat with his teeth. He’d show Pierce what kind of animal he was. 

“Hush,” Pierce said. He dropped his hand on top of Bucky’s head, a heavy quelling touch. It sent a jolt of electricity and tension down Bucky’s spine. “Watch.” 

Bucky looked up at the screen. The image wasn’t bright enough to fully erase his own reflection; he noticed that first. He could see himself shackled to the floor, Pierce sitting above him. He was a dog to a master. That seared him enough that he almost couldn’t even see what was being shown to him. 

“I know the image quality isn’t good,” Pierce said. “But considering you recognized him without a mind at all, I think your super-soldier eyes can manage.” 

Maybe his brain had been trying to protect him, but Pierce wouldn’t let it. On the screen was Steve. 

He was naked, chained to a concrete wall. It was a much more familiar scene than this unassuming supply cabinet. He had a determined stance, hips and shoulders braced, as if the squareness of his jaw could shield the dangling and fleshy vulnerability of his body. 

“Ready?” Pierce said. He stroked Bucky’s hair, but Bucky could not react. Pierce never expected a response to his questions, and this time was no different. He pressed play. 

Steve was still enough that it was as if nothing changed. The time and date in the bottom corner of the screen flashed with every second, blinking in and out of existence. Bucky’s eyes flicked between the minute moments of Steve’s breathing and the seconds ticking by. Perhaps the strongest tell of Steve’s emotional state was the rapidity of his breathing—Steve could hold his breath for nearly an hour, but his chest moved as steady as a metronome. 

In the corner of Bucky’s eye, he could see Pierce’s thumb run back and forth over the remote control. He could imagine Pierce considering whether to fast forward, what the best pacing of the dramatic reveal would be. He decided against doing anything and Bucky understood the decision as if he himself had made it. Best let the Asset linger in this moment—sometimes the fear of a thing did most of the torture. 

Bucky felt like the barrier of his skin had grown porous. Pierce’s absent-minded touch was sinking through him, fondling his guts and liver; his blood was leaking out and dissipating, evaporating into the air. There was inarticulate continuity between himself and the breath in Steve’s lungs. He could taste the air Steve was breathing; he was the smell of mildew and the caked-on filth from years of pain. Bucky couldn’t think about what was about to happen; he curled up inside Steve’s body.

On screen, Pierce entered the frame. There was a subtle twitch of Pierce’s fingers in his hair, like he wanted to make sure Bucky was paying attention to the big reveal. He was. 

“I used to have one super-soldier I couldn’t control because of an old affection,” Pierce said. “I think it’ll be much easier to manage the both of you at the same time.” 

Bucky watched Pierce hold a phone up to Steve and show it to him. 

“I’ll show you later,” Pierce said. “You looked very pathetic, knocked out like you were. Your bloody nose made for very striking pictures.” 

Steve snapped something at Pierce, his mouth curled in contempt. There was no sound on the video, but Bucky heard what Steve said. He growled defiance—a promise to pay Pierce back for this, a promise that he’d regret touching Bucky. Maybe even the old chestnut about being able to take this all day—but no, not that. Steve never thought he could take _Bucky’s_ suffering. 

“Watch,” Pierce said. There was eagerness in his voice, a growing thickness. Bucky could smell the arousal building between his legs—it always took him awhile. Bucky half-thought these elaborate cruelties were to compensate for age and a jaded sensibility that had long since exhausted all the thrill in more normal sexual pleasures. 

Bucky watched. He saw Pierce reach out to Steve and pat him on the cheek, a parody of affection. Steve jerked away, nostrils visibly flaring in affront. Pierce held his hands up, a theatrical show of surprise, and called for something over his shoulder. 

“I told them to get you ready,” Pierce murmured. “I said that I would get my dick sucked by somebody and with a gag, we wouldn’t have to wait until you were awake.” 

He could see the threat on Steve’s face, the way it hit him. The resolve in his shoulders and the way it shook him. Bucky was furious with Steve, in that moment. He knew that Steve would do it before he dropped to his knees. He knew that Steve would fall. How naïve, Bucky thought, with a venom split between Steve and himself for feeling it. There was no stopping this cruelty, but Steve couldn’t help himself—he’d make the sacrifice, given the opportunity, even if that sacrifice couldn’t do shit. 

Bucky couldn’t hear Pierce’s laughter, and it was possible that Steve couldn’t, either. He could see it, though, in the way he tilted his head on screen. Pierce was winning, he knew it, as he unbuckled his belt.  
In the little room with him, this Pierce’s breath was picking up every so slightly. This must be a dream for him, being able to watch an old torture and enact a fresh one at the same time. 

Pierce was already hard when he unbuttoned his pants on screen. The sight of his dick, the thickness of it, the familiar curve—it was grainy, on the poor quality video, but Bucky had seen it enough that it was technicolor clear. He felt like he was in a movie theater, velvet seats, and Steve was next to him, and Pierce’s cock was projected forty-feet high. There was something absurd about dicks, the wrinkles and crevices, and the image should’ve been hilarious. It wasn’t. 

He felt the powerful grip Pierce took in Steve’s hair—his was shorter than they liked to keep Bucky’s, not as much of a handhold, but Bucky remembered the early days, with his almost-regulation military haircut. Men used to have to dig their nails into his scalp to get a grip, each finger a prick of pain. It felt different from the tug of hair. 

The camera’s angle obscured the action, but Pierce knew that Bucky didn’t need much to be right there again. He saw the way Steve struggled to keep his balance against the force of Pierce’s hips, the plunge of Pierce’s cock down his throat moving his whole body. He felt the sting of tears in his eyes—both a physiological response to choking and undeniably psychological. He knew it in his bones. Watching Steve felt indistinguishable from _being_ Steve, and Pierce, too. Steve had sucked his cock—he knew the clutch of Steve’s throat, the way his eyes crinkled up, warmth. They shone, but it wasn’t like crying—it was now. He could too-vividly see the blank look on Steve’s face, trying to conceal his suffering under a mask of fury. The anger would be real, too—but not as real as the violation, not really. 

“It’d been too long,” Pierce said. There was the wet sound of him licking his lips and echoed into the slide of cock against tongue Bucky was hearing in his mind. “I was surprised all over again that I could make even a super-soldier choke on my cock. You’d think your enhancements would protect you, but we both know they don’t.” 

Pierce’s words were a counterpoint to Bucky’s thoughts, underlining already vivid obsessions. Bucky hated that feeling, the back and forth that they’d fall into without Bucky even saying a word—between that and the impossibly tangible memories, Bucky was struggling to hold on to a sense of self. 

“I remember how I could make you come again and again,” Pierce said. “It’s a shame we never figured out how to replicate your serum, I’d like some of that.” 

Perversely, this unexpected comment knocked him off-balance even more. When Pierce spoke his own thoughts back to him, Bucky struggled to keep his balance, but surprise wasn’t any better. This wasn’t a situation Bucky could win. 

“We need to put on a show,” Pierce murmured. He grabbed hard onto Bucky’s hair, jerking his face so he was looking up at a blinking surveillance camera. “We need to give the good Captain something else to perform for, but he used me up for the day. Do you have any ideas?” 

Bucky looked into the camera, grateful that the lens was too small to reflect and that all he heard from the television was a high-pitched electronic hum. Pierce lost patience soon enough, though, and dragged his head back down again—and when he glimpsed Steve on his knees again, he couldn’t look away. 

He watched Pierce pull Steve off of his dick, echoing his own manipulation. The minor variations in color on the screen was enough that Bucky could see the redness of his flush through the monochrome image. He saw Steve smiling, spread out on the bed underneath him—he always blushed so pretty, and Bucky would sit on his hips and see joyful possibility underneath him. 

Cold metal nudged his lips. Without thinking, he opened his mouth and the warmth of Pierce’s chuckle gutted him. He pushed the handgun deep into Bucky’s mouth, bumping painfully against his soft palate. The metal and gun-oil was indistinguishable from the taste of blood already in his mouth; it was like nothing had changed, even the sting of his lips stretching around the barrel already there. 

“That’ll hold you open for me,” Pierce said. “Make sure you suck.” 

His cheeks hollowed with effort before Bucky could tell himself to stop. His gorge rose, his body trying to reject what his mind would not, but at the jerk of his chest Pierce shoved the gun further in, scratching his throat. Bucky’s eyes watered and it felt redundant, like it had already happened—like his projection of himself into Steve’s place should have already changed his body. 

On screen, Pierce came—he could smell it, feel the sticky weight on his eyes. It stung, an insult-to-injury sort of pain. He tasted the amonia of it, blending with the bleach actually in the air around him. Steve retched on screen, and spat on Pierce’s feet. Pierce used the handful of his hair to shake him, like an unruly dog. 

In person, Pierce’s hand had become gentle in his hair, the implacable weight of the gun doing enough cowing. 

“What do you think Steve will think of this image?” Pierce said. His voice was rich with pleasure at the thought. “I can’t imagine he will know what it feels like. The quality is not good. Maybe if I crop it right, I can make it look like you’re considering blowing your brains out. How about that? What would he think of that?” 

Bucky’s first thought was that Steve would be grateful—part of Bucky relaxed at the offer, even. The part of Bucky that had spent so long in Pierce’s hands would have been grateful for the knowledge that Steve was dead as opposed to torture. The beaten animal part of him. Maybe he should try to get Pierce to kill him, spare them both—without Bucky as a bargaining chip, Steve could escape. 

But Steve—Bucky knew, with a sudden clarity, that Steve wouldn’t want him dead. It was a simple realization, in its way, but real. Steve would take any amount of torment to see Bucky live, because Steve never believed that Bucky could be broken. 

It wouldn’t happen again, Bucky thought. He wouldn’t let it—he’d rather die than let it, but he didn’t have to. 

With a sudden burst of motion, he threw his body against Pierce’s—it wouldn’t have been enough, if Pierce had been ready for it, but he wasn’t. Pierce had spent years with the Asset as a mindless tool, an empty vessel only to be filled with the suffering that Pierce put there. Whenever the Asset lashed out, it was clumsy and without follow through—he’d hurt those who hurt him, but then stop, unsure what happened next. Bucky wasn’t him. Bucky was—Bucky didn’t have a plan, but he had the specific and fierce desire that this not happen again. He wouldn’t allow it. 

Bucky, more than anyone, knew that sometimes what you wanted didn’t matter—but in this moment, Pierce clumsily fell off the chair. Bucky had done something unexpected, and it was a scramble, but Bucky spat out the gun and wrapped his fingers around it, twisting his body hard enough that he dislocated his own shoulder, the sharpness of the pain cutting through whatever remaining fog there was in his mind, reminding him of that first moment of claiming his freedom. His flesh fingers were the same as the ones that had shot Steve. 

He shot Pierce, and this time, maybe he’d stay dead. He hadn’t had the chance to do it himself, last time, and there was a deep satisfaction in the way his body slumped. It would be different this time, he thought. 

Steve was in the cell alone, a small figure on the screen. He stood straight, his limbs locked and his face blank, still as stone despite the flashing seconds passing on the videotape. Bucky didn’t know exactly where he was, but he’d been right there. But it’d be different.

He could just reach the hem of Pierce’s pants. He used his grip and dragged him closer, methodically searching the body for some sort of key, body twisted around. He faced the mundane wall of office supplies, having to do this by touch alone, but he knew Pierce. The knowledge was hard-won, and when his fingers touched a slender metal remote that he recognized as the release for the cuffs, he was surprised to feel something like gratitude.


End file.
